


Brown Eyed Handsome Man

by 17603



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: M/M, Pining, Sex Pollen, Unrequited
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-02
Updated: 2012-10-02
Packaged: 2017-11-15 12:20:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,022
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/527247
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/17603/pseuds/17603
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's terrible, getting what you've always wanted.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Brown Eyed Handsome Man

**Author's Note:**

> Sex pollen comes with weird consent issues. Nothing happens, but be warned anyway. Title from a Buddy Holly song.

They drop Bruce Banner off in Hank Pym’s lab around noon.

He’s partly insensible, eyes glassy and lips parted, covered in a sheen of sweat. His hands shake as they reach out, grabbing at air, and the two SHIELD agents who were holding him up edge away with poorly disguised relief. Hank’s kneeling at his side in seconds, checking his pulse (quick, but not dangerously so), noting the elevated body temperature and that the hospital scrubs he’s wearing are soaked through.  
“What happened?” he asks them, shifting his knees on the linoleum, and they exchange uneasy looks. “Airborne toxins? What should I be testing for?”  
“Actually,” one of the agents sniggers, “we just need you to keep an eye on him.”  
“What? Why?” Hank says, and Bruce chooses that moment to surge upwards, fling his arms around Hank’s neck and kiss him aggressively on the mouth.  
“He’ll do that,” the other agent says sagely. “Sex pollen, nasty stuff. He planted one on Coulson earlier, should have seen his eyes pop. Anyhow, standard procedure, keep a log of behavior and if it lasts longer than fifteen hours, call medical.”  
“There’s a standard procedure for sex pollen?” Hank wants to say, but by the time he detaches Bruce from his mouth, they’re gone. He says it to the closed door anyway, and tries to ignore the hands rubbing over his chest through his lab coat, and swipes one away when it makes a daring grab for his belt.  
“I don’t think so,” he says, and hates how his stomach lurches at the disappointed noise Bruce makes.

Bruce Banner, bespectacled mop-haired nerd, soft-spoken genius and occasional green rage machine, has featured prominently in all of his (stupid) daydreams for the past eight months, more or less ever since they met, since Hank started in the science division at SHIELD. He’s also been very firmly off limits for the past eight months, and Hank has managed to ignore most non-professional feelings, and pass off anything else as misplaced admiration. He’s brilliant and friendly and a hero, even if he doesn’t think so, awkwardly charming and well liked. He’s everything Hank isn’t, and everything he’s never had.

The first hour passes slowly, Bruce pawing at him while he tries to take blood samples, deftly undoing whatever bits of clothing he can reach. Hank shivers when he untucks his shirt from his trousers while he’s leaning over him shining a light into his pupils, and lets out an undignified yelp when long sticky fingers skate up his bare sides, leaving the prickle of goosebumps in their wake. He manages to draw blood without making much of a mess, and when he smooths a bandaid into the crook of Bruce’s elbow, he leans back and makes a low, happy humming sound, watching Hank from under hooded lids. He has beautiful eyes, deep brown with flecks of hazel, expressive and large in his face.

Hank tries really hard not to look at him.

It’s not that he doesn’t want to, it’s that he really, really wants to.

Hour two, he wrestles him into the bathroom and runs cold water over his wrists, sponges at his neck and face with wet wads of paper towel to try and bring his temperature down. What mostly happens is that Bruce takes off his damp t-shirt and presses close, so close that Hank can feel his warmth, and kisses the underside of his jaw while he tries to push him away without touching bare skin.

He fails, and the coarse trail of hair down Bruce’s stomach (into his trousers, slung low of his hips) sears itself into his memory via the misplaced palm of his hand. Eventually he gets a grip on his upper arms and wrenches him off, but as soon as he lets go, Bruce springs at him, has him shoved against the sinks with a hand on each hipbone before he knows what’s hit him. He drops to his knees and Hank’s brain freezes, just shorts out (this has been one of his fantasies for months, he’s dreamed of this) and Bruce has almost got his belt and trousers undone by the time he realizes that he didn’t dream of it like this, not at all, and manages to move.

Bruce sprawls back over the tile floor when he shoves him, skids on his bare back a little, and there’s a moment where Hank thinks he sees a flash of green in his eyes, but it turns out to be his imagination, because nothing happens. He just props himself up on his elbows and cocks his head, hair falling in his eyes as he stares at Hank, who’s still standing against the sink, trousers undone and slipping down his thighs. He licks his lips, slow and deliberate.

Hank throws his discarded shirt at him and leaves, clutching the front of his trousers. He locks the door.

Most of hour three, Hank spends at his desk, head in his hands, feeling sick. Bruce knocks politely to come out just before hour four, and he can’t leave him in there, can’t refuse him.

He’s all right for a while, meandering around the lab, peering up from under his eyelashes, cheeks flushed. Hank tries not to think about him jerking off in the bathroom, tries not to wonder if he did (he definitely did), tries not to wonder what would have happened if he’d let him do what he wanted to.

He’d hate himself, that’s what would happen. It’s not right at all.

Hours five, six and seven are spent on the floor, both of them sprawled on their sides on the the linoleum. Bruce shuffles back against Hank’s chest, pulls his arms around him and pushes his head back against his shoulder, baring his throat. He talks a lot in these three hours, says a lot of stuff, a lot of it is kind of dirty, although not really, not compared to other people. He doesn’t ask Hank to fuck him or anything, he just tells him how he’d like to peel off his lab coat and trace his veins and arteries through his skin, bite his hipbones and pull at his hair. It’s almost more obscene.

Hank tries not to listen, just keeps his arms tight around his chest and stomach and wishes he’d stop shifting against him, wishing he could ask him not to stop.

Hour eight seems like the eye of the storm. Bruce sits next to him, hands roaming over his back, bony fingertips pressing into all the knots of muscle as he hums quietly. It’s pleasant, his shoulders loosen and he manages to read an entire article and still remember what it was about at the end. Sort of. Hank knows the reprieve is over when the arms circle his waist and he feels hot breath on the nape of his neck.

Hours nine and ten are spent back on the floor. Bruce begs him to just touch him, just please fucking touch me, grabs at his wrists and shirtfront. Hank pulls him into his lap and strokes his hair, rubs his narrow shoulders and freckly hands (digs his thumbs into the flesh of his palms, rolls his knuckles between his fingertips, delicately works his wrist joints) and pretends he’s not memorizing what he can’t have. It’s nothing untoward, definitely nothing inappropriate, but he stills feels like a traitor. The worst part is that Bruce responds, arches into him like a cat, like his touch is welcome, like he’s getting exactly what he’s always wanted.

That’s not possible. Hank is the one getting what he’s always wanted, and he’s discovering how goddamn awful that can be.

When Bruce falls asleep just after hour eleven, tucked under his chin, in his arms, sitting in the space between Hank’s open legs, he kisses him on the side of the head, because he’ll never have another chance. Bruce makes a happy noise and mumbles someone else’s name.

Hank has never hated anything quite so much as he hates himself.

The door squeaks open a crack partway through hour twelve, when Bruce is lying with his head in Hank’s lap, dozing. He’s really dehydrated, his lips are cracked and he’s trembling, but he’s also finally sleeping and Hank doesn’t want to risk waking him up. He’ll survive.  
“I heard you had something of mine,” Clint says cheerfully, winking at Hank.  
Bruce lurches sleepily upright. “Clint,” he mumbles, stretching out his hands towards him.  
“Hey there,” Clint says, dropping to one knee to allow him to fling his arms loosely around his neck. “Heard you got yourself sex pollened.”  
“Yeah,” he says into his armored shoulder as Clint pulls him close. “I did. Wasn’t my fault though.”  
Hank is close enough to see that Bruce has started kissing his way up the closed collar of the combat gear, up onto dirty skin, up his jaw. Clint’s hands splay on his sides, bigger than Hank’s. His bare arms are impressive, muscular, and he hoists Bruce up easily.

“Let’s leave poor Dr Pym in peace and go work off the last of it,” Clint says.  
“He’s probably dehydrated, see if you can get him to drink some water,” Hank mumbles.  
“Thanks for looking after him,” Clint says over Bruce’s shoulder, and gives him a rare genuine smile, blue eyes crinkling at the corners. “I really appreciate it, and he will too once he’s out of his sex coma or whatever it is.”  
Hank shrugs. “Any time.”

It’d somehow be better if Clint wasn’t really smart, if he wasn’t sharp and capable and funny, if he wasn’t so totally worthy of what he has in ways that Hank never will be.

Feeling sick and hollow inside, half regretful half ashamed, he settles down at his desk and turns to a new page in his personal notebook. No time like the present to tackle the whole shrink and grow problem, he figures, and gets in a good six hours before he passes out at his desk.

He’s close to a breakthrough, about eight days later, when Bruce shuffles into his lab, eyes firmly on the floor. Hank doesn’t even hear most of his apology over the blood roaring in his ears. A few words stick, like regret and ashamed and awkward, but when Bruce says “I hope it wasn’t too awful for you,” Hank can’t help himself.  
“I like you,” he blurts out, and feels himself go bright red as Bruce’s brow furrows.  
“What?”  
“I like you,” he says again. He should stop talking, Bruce has a boyfriend, a gorgeous, muscular boyfriend who could snap him like a twig, but he suddenly can’t. “I really like you, you’re brilliant and funny and handsome and your eyes are stunning and-“  
“Hank!” Bruce snaps, and he sees it, he sees the frightened flickers of green, the anger seething under his skin. “I’m sorry, okay, I was cracked out on some kind of drug and I didn’t know what I was doing, I wasn’t myself, I wasn’t behaving like that because I really like you-“  
“Since I met you,” Hank says, because his mouth isn’t taking orders right now and the last words are still echoing around in his head, not quite settled and sunk in yet, he didn’t do it because he likes me, because he doesn’t like me, not at all. “I just thought you should know.”  
Bruce buries his face in his hands for a few brief seconds, takes a deep long breath that swells his shoulders and tips his head down further. “Thank you,” he says, and then “I’m sorry,” and then he leaves.

Hank stares numbly at the door long after it clicks shut.

Something in his head clicks shut.

He sits down at his desk, and within two weeks he can make himself as small as he feels, as he’s always felt.

Bruce smiles at him when he demonstrates Pym Particles, he gives him a wide excited smile that lights up his eyes behind his glasses and changes his whole face.

Hank keeps shrinking, smaller and smaller until he’s the size of an ant.


End file.
